(Image from Barnes & Noble)

When you come from a line of strong women who've been scandalizing your small Mississippi town for the last 45 years, your reputation is pretty much doomed from the start.  It doesn't matter that 15-year-old Mosey earns stellar grades and stays away from boys.  She's a Slocumb, which means she'll end up barefoot and pregnant before she has a chance to graduate high school.  Just like her mother, just like her grandmother.  No one expects anything less.  Except Mosey, who refuses to follow the future-less path fate has laid out before her.

Still, everyone knows big trouble comes calling for the Slocumb women every fifteen years.  This year is no exception.  While digging a swimming pool on their property, a worker unearths a rusted treasure box with a tiny skeleton inside.  Mosey's as shocked by the discovery as her grandmother is, but the revelation causes Mosey's mother to utter the first intelligible word she's said since her recent stroke—mine.  Struggling to make sense of that startling proclamation, Mosey begs her grandmother for answers.  Ginny "Big" Slocumb doesn't have them—at least not all of them—but she'll die before she lets the scandal destroy her family.  Big will do anything, risk everything, to protect Mosey and her stroke-ravaged mother.  Even if it means covering up a shocking secret from the past.  

I love me a lush multi-generational novel brimming with family secrets and Southern charm.  I've recently discovered Joshilyn Jackson, whose novels deliver just that.  Although I didn't enjoy A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty nearly as much as The Almost Sisters, I still found it engrossing.  Centered around three headstrong, intriguing women, the story pulled me in and made me care about what happened to this dysfunctional, yet devoted family.  The mystery at its core kept the novel interesting, even if the Big Reveal didn't feel all that surprising.  While A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty definitely gets sad and depressing—way more so than you'd expect judging by the book's light, frothy cover—it's a compelling read that kept me turning pages.  It's not my favorite Jackson novel, but overall I enjoyed it.  

(Readalikes:  The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson.  Also reminds me of novels by Anne Rivers Siddons and Karen White, although White's books are gentler—more in the PG-13 range—but with less personality than those by Jackson and Siddons.)

Grade:

If this were a movie, it would be rated:

for strong language, sexual content, violence, and depictions of illegal drug use

To the FTC, with love:  I bought a copy of A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty with a portion of the millions I make from my lucrative career as a book blogger.  Ha ha.

(Image from Barnes & Noble)

Hope Stevens doesn't have a lot of reason to stick around Chicago.  Her marriage is done, her part-time job at a graphic design firm is going nowhere, and she's feeling bruised all over.  It's a perfect opportunity for the 31-year-old painter to get away, to recharge somewhere far from the stress of her everyday life.  In little Wedding Tree, Louisiana, Hope's beloved grandmother needs help after being hospitalized from a bad fall.  The 91-year-old can't be left alone.  Hope volunteers not just to stay by her side, but also to help the elderly woman clean out her cluttered home so she can move in with her son in California.  

Adelaide McCauley welcomes her granddaughter's help and company.  Especially since Adelaide's mother has made it clear (from beyond the grave, no less) that Adelaide will not be "crossing over" until she's spilled the shocking secret she's been guarding for most of her life.  The old woman can't just blurt it out, so she begins at the beginning, telling Hope all about her World War II romance with a man who wasn't her husband.  Adelaide dreads the story's end, terrified that the heartbreaking truth will change the warm friendship that's blossoming between herself and Hope.  

The relationship with her grandmother isn't the only one that's blooming for Hope.  She's become enmeshed in the lives of her neighbors, a handsome attorney and his two young daughters.  Although Hope is sure Matt sees her the way everyone else seems to—as a ditzy, impulsive screw-up—she's falling in love with him in spite of her best intentions not to.  Does Hope dare to pursue a romance that has no chance of lasting?  Can she learn her grandmother's secrets before it's too late?  Will the floundering Hope find herself in Wedding Tree or will she leave town as heartbroken as when she came?

When I read the plot summary for The Wedding Tree by Robin Wells, I thought, "Ooooh, sounds like a contemporary Southern version of a Kate Morton novel."  As you can probably imagine, that idea had me practically salivating.  I adore multi-generational family sagas, especially those set in the South, so I expected to love this one.  Why didn't I?  It just lacked a little something for me.  Weird considering The Wedding Tree is, overall, a happy, upbeat novel about forgiveness and renewal.  Hope and Adelaide are both interesting women, sympathetic but spunky.  Their voices give the story a funny, engaging tone that makes it enjoyable, despite sometimes difficult subject matter.  What is missing from the novel, then?  Well, subtlety.  And conflict.  And suspense.  More of all three would have made the story richer, more substantial.  The tale gets too predictable, wrapping up in a way I found anti-climactic.  As a whole, I enjoyed this light read, just not as much as I wanted to.

(Readalikes:  Reminds me of a Kate Morton novel [because of its premise, not its prose] or one of Karen White's Southern family sagas)

Grade:

If this were a movie, it would be rated:

for language (no F-bombs) and some surprisingly graphic sexual content

To the FTC, with love:  I received an e-ARC of The Wedding Tree from the generous folks at Berkley/NAL (a division of Penguin Random House).  Thank you!